


Queen Rot

by ultraviolence



Category: Abarat Series - Clive Barker, BARKER Clive - Works
Genre: Angst, F/M, Pre-Abarat, before the events in the books
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-25
Updated: 2015-05-25
Packaged: 2018-04-01 05:40:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4007941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ultraviolence/pseuds/ultraviolence
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a better world, she would love him back. In a better world, the day would fall in love with the night. This is not that world. // A portrait of Carrion's relationship with Boa, before her death. Oneshot, drabble. Spoilers for Absolute Midnight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Queen Rot

**i.**

Accidents happened all the time.

He doesn’t believe that there is a greater force at work, a grand design that underlies the universe. Christopher Carrion puts his faith in chaos and chance, took a refuge in the fact that in the end, it all doesn’t matter. Even what he and his grandmother been plotting, no, it doesn’t matter.

There is only the darkness, spread out between the stars and in his heart (if he had any), vast, naked, and unrelenting.

Then he met her.

 

**ii.**

Boa was, simply, everything he was not. She was gold where he was rust, softness and unhurt where he was rough with edges as jagged as a mantizac’s teeth, stars where he was gaping darkness. She was light, pure and simple, and he loved her the moment he laid his eyes on her.

In a better world, she would love him back. In a better world, the day would fall in love with the night.

This is not that world.

 

**iii.**

This is a game they’re playing, a lethal game.

She pretended that she was genuinely interested in him, in his pain, his idle dreams he’d shared with nobody else but her. Oh, how she loved his stories. How in all those clandestine meetings and letters she always begged him to tell more of his stories. Her interest in his tales (as with his magic) had been genuine, at least. In the beginning, he was naïve. In the beginning, he would have moved the heavens and the stars for her.

In the end, Christopher Carrion still loved the Princess Boa, even if it hurts.

 

**iv.**

It was easy for her to fool other people into thinking that she was their ideal princess, that she was the light made flesh. But he’d spent his life in the hard embrace of the darkness, and the moonlight distorted everything under its eerie gaze, turning man into monsters and witches into princesses.

She is moonlight.

Carrion was not fooled.

 

**v.**

She won him over anyway, with her easy charm and her faux-empathy and her smiles, so bright that it rivaled the sun. She won him over like she won everyone else, effortlessly, making them think that it was their own idea, that they liked her, adored her, loved her. She won him over and she is the vision of Paradise, promising him love and salvation.

But she was no angel.

When he stopped denying it, stopped ignoring his reason in favour of his emotions, she’d stolen a lot from him – not only magic, but the unforgiveable: his heart.

Carrion’s heart is a deadbolt cathedral, sacred and abandoned, and he’d prided himself for being untouchable. Unconquerable. He’d rather die than change the locks, would rather let fire consumed it all, the same way it’d consumed the rest of his family.

She’d been inside. She’d picked the locks, one by one, falling like flies, and she’d entered the hallowed sanctuary of his heart, had desecrated it.

That was her first betrayal.

 

**vi.**

Her second betrayal was when she gave him a formal answer – _no, I can’t do it, I can’t be with you_ – after they had played this game for the longest while, him pulling and she’s pushing away, him flushing out information about the Day islands and her stealing his magic. They each stole something from each other, both are thieves and both are guilty, but her crime, oh, her great crime was that she had stolen _his_ heart.

And then had the audacity to announce her betrothal to someone else.

She’s giving her heart (if she had any, if she had any) to the pretty boy, and this is her endgame.

Checkmate.

 

**vii.**

Carrion let Boa think that she wins.

He let her think that she’d had victory, that she’d obliterated him completely by stealing his heart. He let her think that he is the loser, that he is mourning over his loss and mooning over her in his island of Midnight.

Revenge is turning your enemy’s joy to ashes in their mouths. This, he’d learnt from his grandmother, the most wicked woman in the entirety of the Abarat.

So he let her think that she is happy, she is safe.

 

**viii.**

He murdered her on her wedding day and took the fall.

 _The light has been extinguished from these islands forever_ , whispered the ignorant. He wanted to tell them how wrong they were, that they had no inkling of what actually had happened between them. Of their beloved princess’s heart.

He’d seen her heart, and because of the darkness in his veins, because he doesn’t know any better, because he had nobody to teach him any better, he still wanted it. Her heart was full of rot and poison, a deadly nightshade, but he wanted it all the same.

A rotten heart was better than nothing at all, and his own was a starving wolf.

 

**ix.**

She’d died, but her ghosts remained. He was not the picture of beauty before (too cold and too hard to be handsome, too aloof to be charming, unlike the pretty boy she’d chosen) but whereas he still managed to control his pain and nightmares before, now they controlled him in entirety. And sometimes during one of his walks he’d still say things that were left unsaid between them, things like _I love you_ and _I’ve seen you for who you_ _are_ and _you deserved your death_.

But she’d died, by his hands, his design.  _Checkmate_.

Accidents happened all the time, and this is simply one of those casual occurrences.

 

**x.**

She'd died, yet she still held his heart. 

**Author's Note:**

> I was wondering how the relationship between the Power Trio would played out before the events in the books, especially Carrion/Boa - by the third book, it is shown that they might be something of a power couple if she's not that much of a psychopath. The dynamics between them are certainly interesting, and I suppose I have listened to too much Miss Jackson. [This](http://thanatologicals.tumblr.com/post/119447481379/saltysalmonella-personaromantic-sent-me-some) and [this](http://thanatologicals.tumblr.com/post/119858477749/hickfuentes-the-crossover-you-never-knew-you) are among the things that inspires me to write this piece. There is also [this mixtape](http://thanatologicals.tumblr.com/post/119170957259/baunilla-died-in-your-arms-listen), and Play a Game of Mine @ FF is what largely inspires my characterisation of Carrion (and his appearance before her death) and the dynamics between them.


End file.
